The Saga pattern coordinates a long-running business workflow as a sequence of local transactions across multiple services.

Each step commits in one service. If a later step fails, the saga runs compensating actions for the steps that already completed. An order workflow, for example, might create an order, reserve inventory, and charge a customer. If payment fails, the saga releases the reservation and cancels the order rather than trying to roll back committed work in other services.

A saga is not a distributed ACID transaction. It does not provide all-or-nothing isolation across services. It trades strict atomicity for service autonomy and availability, giving the system a structured way to reach a correct business outcome over time.